Sunday, March 26, 2017

My take on Friendship

Sure, you’ll go through many friendships in your years. Some will last 10 years or more, some will last 10 months or less, but the length of the relationship is not everything. It is the feeling that you are with your own siblings that is worth protecting, cherishing, and rekindling when possible, for those are the friendships that do not often or easily come along.

I have had my share of relationships that lasted years, then ended. Some of those, we grew apart physically, some others, we grew apart emotionally, and in some cases, we grew apart intellectually.

But the struggle is in the feelings, how we yield to them, how we live them, how we tolerate them, question them, survive them, deny them, and how we do not understand them. Our feelings mostly win. We have to be wise beyond our years in dealing with, reacting to, and acknowledging those feelings. We miss, long for, and yearn to lost relationships. However, the one universal mistake most of us make is when we mix up experiencing loss with feeling lonely.

Loneliness is not a healthy incentive to go chasing lost friendships. Loneliness can be felt even with the company of friends when there isn’t any connection. Yet some of us want to be surrounded by people regardless of that connection. If that works for you, and it happens to work for the friend you are connecting with, then it can’t be that bad. But that is not a real relationship. It is doomed to end and restart over and over since its foundation is based on "better have someone's company than being alone." And believe me, a lot of times it is better being alone than having the company of people you think of as friends who do not treat you well or respect you and your individuality, or take advantage of you and your generosity.

Experiencing loss is hard. You have to be strong to go through it and survive it. You cannot hide from it or deny it, because it will come back and haunt you if you do. Experiencing loss is worth investigating. That friendship had something very special that its absence created void in your life; a void that has nothing to do with feeling lonely. That friendship nurtured you, gave you more depth, different dimension, unique color, self-worth, comfort, and a certain kind of satisfaction that you are unable to put into words. It gave you purpose, a reason to smile, to continue, to be a better person, to nourish, to contribute, to listen, to share, to give, and when you give, you feel love.

Loss is definitely an incentive to make an effort to rekindle certain relationships. However, for that loss to be dealt with in a healthy way, it has to be felt on both ends and it has to have closure. Speak up, connect, tell them how you feel, tell them what your intention is, and find a way to go past whatever caused that friendship to end. Life’s too short to live it alone when you are able to go past certain issues and you know that the other person you miss, is probably missing you too. Work it out.

Many of my previous friends booked a special place in my heart and I cherish
their memories. They had a positive role in my life, and that role was fulfilled, so it was time to move on. And although I miss them and I would love to see them and hang out with them again, I just don't feel a loss without them. But there are only a few, a very selected few,
that the loss of their presence in my life weighs down on me. Those were my true friends and I am blessed to still have some friends in my life that I learned from my past relationships to work out past any and all issues and focus on what really matters; our friendship.